


Conspiracies, Office Gossip, and Awful Decisions

by TheLonelyCastle



Series: The Loving Rosie Saga [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-20 15:04:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19994185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLonelyCastle/pseuds/TheLonelyCastle
Summary: Everyone knows that the archives are strange, so the Magnus Institute Conspiracy Club is here to find out their secrets. Rosie didn't want to get caught up in this but she too, was curious about the weird things that are going on in the basement.





	Conspiracies, Office Gossip, and Awful Decisions

**Author's Note:**

> Shout out to this weird idea that spawned from some strange discord conversations. Follow me on tumblr at https://hazyskies.tumblr.com/ to see more of my tma bullshit. Also this is quite literally the first piece of fan media I've ever created so hopefully its not to awful!

Rosie didn’t expect her off time to be spent conspiring with her coworkers but here she was. Well, she wouldn’t call it conspiring but Dave, head of IT and creator of the club, insisted on calling them the, “Magnus Institute Conspiracy Club.” She hadn’t even known about it until she talked with the other secretary, Carrie, during their lunch break and she told her about it.

“Hey, don’t you think the archives are kind of weird,” she had said while they were sharing funny anecdotes about the departments (like the one time when Mark, head of the research department, had quite literally got lost in the library and stayed there for 2 hours until one of the librarians had found him. He claimed that he was looking for a book that someone had asked him about and then got lost when he couldn’t find it). 

“I mean yeah, but isn’t most of the ‘weird stories about the archives’ just rumors anyway?” Rosie had responded. 

“Yeah sure they’re just  _ rumors _ , as if a department with a death count didn’t already have something strange going on. Think about it Rosie! When was the last time you saw literally any of the archive staff other than them being weird and cryptic about everything?” Carrie questioned, “And out of all of the departments,  _ they’re  _ the ones who get the most complaints.” Throughout the rest of their conversation Carrie had convinced Rosie to join the, “Magnus Institute Conspiracy Club” with her. Rosie had always known that the archives were weird, how couldn’t you, anyone at the Magnus Institute could say at least three weird things about the archives from just working there for a week. 

First off there was the fact that, as Carrie had said, there was a death count with the archives and their employees, then of course the head of the department, Jonathan Sims, looked like a dead man walking most of the time and almost never left his office. Rosie knew that he already had a resting face full of annoyance and tiredness but since becoming head archivist it seemed as though his face was in a permanent state of dread. The others in the department weren’t too different, Basira was barely seen, off doing god knows what, Melanie never talked to anyone outside of the department anymore and what Rosie had seen it didn’t seem like she talked very much to anyone  _ in _ the archives either, and there was Daisy who wasn’t seen much outside of the archives either, she would go in and out of the institute on occasion but she rarely talked to any of the other staff. Then there was Martin whose actual position in the institute was still kind of a mystery to her. According to the emails she got he was the assistant to the new head of the institute, Peter Lukas, a man who Rosie had never seen before and apparently no one else had. She had no clue how an archival assistant became the assistant to the manger, hell, that was technically  _ her  _ job but she hadn’t seen Martin in months so it was unlikely how she was going to get the conclusion to that question. Suffice to say, the archives and its people were subject to many rumors. Ones about how they all were in some weird cult or how they were conspiring against the rest of the institute. These rumors were what led Rosie to join the Magnus Institute Conspiracy Club because, while she doubted that they had any answers, maybe they could piece together what was really going on. That curiosity led her to where she was now, sitting in a slightly crowded office at 8 pm with her coworkers. 

“Settle down everyone! Mark has some new evidence to share with you all!” Dave shouted over the small crowd. Slowly everyone settled down as Mark walked up to the white board at the front of the room next to Dave. Every one of the department heads were here (other than the archives of course) and a couple of the other workers that had gotten invited. Rosie sat there next to Carrie, wondering what “evidence” Mark had gotten, as Mark’s personal theory was that the archives were actually a cult and were sacrificing people (which Rosie did  _ not  _ believe). Most of Mark’s thought process regarding  _ why  _ the archives were a cult were largely based on Mark’s idea that, “Jon looks like a cult-y person,” and when questioned what exactly what a “cult-y person” looked like he said, “You know! A weird face, looks like they stalk people, that kind of thing!” Most people other than some of the newer institute workers disagreed with his theories. Most of the newer workers had only heard of the infamous man in passing and had never actually  _ seen  _ him. They only knew him by the strange rumors the archives produced which mostly entailed him being a cult leader, a ghost, a drug dealer (or a drug addict depending on who you asked), or just a really weird dude. Rosie had chosen to believe that he was none of those and instead just a misunderstood man going through  _ a lot  _ of stress. She’d known him before his transfer to the archives and, while being very closed off and pretentious, he was just an introverted man who took his work very seriously. She felt bad for him sometimes. 

The general consensus in the club was either that the archives were haunted or that they were a part of some secret underground mafia that they couldn’t tell the rest of the institute about. Rosie personally believed that the archives were haunted after getting a strange feeling every time she went down there. Also, the one and only time she went into Jon’s office she felt the strongest feeling of being watched she’d ever had. Then of course there was the fact that the security cameras couldn’t be installed down there. The idea was plausible, the building was 200 years old anyway and multiple workers from there had died or disappeared, maybe their ghosts were haunting their coworkers? She was just surprised that the rest of the institute didn’t seem haunted. 

Carrie supported the mafia theory the most because, according to her, “They always are away or getting caught up in dangerous business, that’s clearly mafia activity!” When Rosie asked what their “dangerous business” was she cited that they were in some way responsible for the destruction of an old wax museum and that they always were going off doing secret stuff that no one else in the institute knew about. Rosie questioned that if the archives were, in fact, a part of the mafia would that mean that Elias was also a part of it, Carrie answered with a strict “yes” at that. 

“He killed two people Rosie! With almost no reason why! That’s  _ obviously  _ something someone a part of the mafia would do! He’s probably got some ulterior motives that he got the archives in on, that’s why they don’t talk to the rest of us, because they don’t want their secrets to be uncovered,” Carrie explained. Rosie doubted that  _ all  _ of the people in the archives had nefarious motives. Jon, she could see maybe having some strange goals, he didn’t talk much to people anyway and was “kind of creepy” according to most people. Martin however she could never see having ulterior motives, he was probably one of the kindest people she’d met in years, he’d worked at the institute for a decade, and according to one of the librarians, Martin was actually the one who sent Elias to prison. Rosie doubted that if they all were a part of the mafia they would send their leader (presumably) to prison. “That’s just what they want you to think! They could be going after you next Rosie!” Carrie exclaimed one day at lunch while trying to prove her case. Even if the archives  _ were _ a part of the mafia, that didn’t explain the weird feelings she got when she was down there. No matter what, something strange was going on. 

~

Something strange was going on in the archives indeed. Daisy was forcing everyone (yes  _ everyone Melanie _ ) to listen to  _ The Archers  _ because according to her, “Everyone needs to calm down for five minutes before someone gets killed!” None of them knew if that meant that  _ she  _ was going to kill one of them or one of the others would kill someone else but they didn’t want to find out. This meant that they all begrudgingly sat down in the main office space of the archives and listened to  _ The Archers.  _ By the end of the night, the four of them (Helen had decided to join them) were sick of, “This dumb farm village bullshit!” as Melanie had put it and after two hours of listening to the show Daisy finally let them leave.

“I think it went well,” Daisy said, none of them understood what she meant by that but hey, it at least distracted all of them for a while. Melanie absolutely despised it and Helen was indifferent to it as she was most things. Basira, while not exactly enjoying it, enjoyed seeing Daisy happy and she had gotten used to it over the years. Jon hated it but it was a well needed distraction and he’d gotten good at tuning it out due to the many times before she had forced him to listen to it before. 

Most of them had decided to go to sleep after that as it was almost midnight anyways. Well, most of them, Jon being the stubborn idiot that he was, decided to keep working in his office until he passed out from exhuastion. That was nothing unusual and the archives went on as they always had, the feeling of being watched persisted and they all tried to sleep without nightmares.

~

This night was an absolute nightmare. The “evidence” that Mark had apparently gotten to prove that the archives were sacrificing people was that multiple people who had given statements to the archives had also died somewhat recently after making a statement. Nina, the head librarian, argued that, “People die all the time! That doesn’t mean that they’re sacrificing people!” which Rosie agreed with. Just because people who happened to go to the archives died didn’t mean that the archives specifically were killing them. This spurred a large dispute that lasted way longer than it should have.

“What god would they be sacrificing people to anyway?” Tabitha, one of the researchers, questioned. It was a valid question that Rosie had thought about herself. She doubted that everyone in the archives worshipped the same god _and_ that they were all so extreme that they sacrificed people. Hell, the only person she could actually see hurting people was Daisy, and that was because she constantly carrying around knives and the one time she’d actually talked to her Rosie got the sense that she wasn’t exactly a people person. Carrie had tried to make the argument that _anyone_ could kill a person but Rosie didn’t want to think about it.

“I dunno! That’s what we have to find out. Maybe they worship a god that hates wax museums and statement givers!” Mark replied. 

“They could be cannibals and eating these statement givers!” Dave added on. 

“Then why would the statement givers be getting killed  _ months  _ after they gave their statement?” Tabitha questioned again. 

“Again! That’s what we have to find out! If the archives have been killing people for sacrifice then we’ve gotta go down there to get more evidence and stop them!” Mark answered. If Mark was planning on going down to the archives to accuse them of murder, Rosie wanted nothing to do with it. 

“And that’s why we’re putting together a team to do it!” Dave chimed in. 

_ Oh god  _ Rosie thought. 

~

And that was how Rosie ended up walking down the steps to the archives with Dave and Mark on her lunch break. She didn’t really know how she’d gotten roped into this mess but no matter what she regretted all of it. As Dave opened the door to the archives the weird feeling she got increased. It was like an invisible force was watching and criticizing her every move. She absolutely hated that feeling. The archives seemed ominously quiet in a way that further proved her ‘the archives are haunted’ theory. According to Mark they were going to “Look around and try to find something interesting,” which was undoubtedly a stupid plan but she decided to just go with it anyways.

“See, I told you it was creepy down here,” Mark said, breaking the silence in a way that made it even more apparent that they shouldn’t be here. No wonder some of the assistants left so often, she was only there for a minute and she’d already hated it. Rosie didn’t know what “looking around” meant because to her there was nothing to see. It just looked like a normal office, somewhat messy and unorganized, but other than that it wasn’t that interesting. The most interesting part was the awful feeling she got down there, which she doubted had anything to do with the actual workers of the department. 

“We should go to Jon’s office, didn’t you say that you wanted to ask some questions Mark?” Dave suggested. 

_ God what kind of questions are they talking about?  _ Rosie thought. She really would rather not bother the man considering the fact that he didn’t look like he’d slept in weeks when she’d seen him last. But, Mark and Dave were the leaders and she didn’t want to argue with them, especially with the growing headache that she was getting. They slowly walked towards his office with Mark knocking on the door. After hearing a confirmation to enter Mark opened the door to the small office. The office was cluttered with papers and files stacked on the desk that Jon was sitting at, and there he sat, looking quite confused as to why the head of IT, the head of research, and the secretary were all standing in the door of his office. He was sitting at his desk with his laptop open, clearly taking some sort of notes before they came in. Her headache had increased tenfold with coming into the office. 

“Oh um, hello Rosie, Mark, Dave, may I ask why you all are down here?” he asked quietly. He looked not only confused, but tired, more than usual which wasn’t a great sign. Asking weird questions to a tired man wasn’t the best idea and Rosie wanted to leave out of the sheer weirdness of it all. His eyes looked weary in a way that she’d sadly seen before but they also showed something that Rosie hadn’t noticed before. They shined in a strange way that Rosie didn’t know if was just due to his glasses or something else. Rosie knew that this would be something Mark would use later to help his idea that he looked “cult-y” but she couldn’t blame him. 

“We just wanted to ask some questions about the archives and we decided to go to you,” Mark said. Rosie really didn’t want to find out what “questions” that Mark was going to ask. She swore to herself that if Mark asked him if he was a cult leader she was going to slap him. 

“Okay uh… sure I guess? Ask away,” he said timidly, he clearly wasn’t used to people coming to ask him questions, he even seemed confused as to why people were seeking him out in the first place. 

“How do you feel about your job?” Mark asked. Rosie hid the shock she felt,  _ that  _ was the first question he was asking? She didn’t know if that was a good or bad sign but before she could figure out how she felt on it Jon answered the question. 

“Oh well, I don’t… I don’t  _ hate  _ it I guess?” he answered, the way that he said the word “hate” made it clear that he was trying to make his answer as polite as possible without saying what he truly felt. By seeing the look on his face as he answered it was obvious that he wished he could say more but couldn’t out of what probably was fear. Rosie assumed that he thought that this was some kind of company check up, to see how well he was doing with his job. Elias would sometimes have Rosie or someone else do those checks once in a while, she always hated doing them. 

“That’s good,” Mark replied flatly, it didn’t seem like that was the answer he was looking for. He stepped forwards more into Jon’s office, looking around. “You’ve got quite a lot of papers here, what kind of work do you do down here Jon? I’ve never known too much about archiving,” Mark added, he obviously was trying to get some sort of interesting information out of him and Rosie knew that Jon knew that as well. She looked over to Dave who was clearly getting kind of uncomfortable with the entire endeavor, he was never a people person. She wasn’t sure if Dave was just uncomfortable with just the conversation they were having or if he was getting the same headache that she was getting. She didn’t know how anyone could stand to be in the room for more than five minutes, it was like she could feel all of her thoughts being torn out of her skull, maybe that was why Jon and the others looked so tired all the time. 

“Oh you know, normal archiving I guess? We just record the statements, look for connections with them, research, that kind of stuff. It’s… it’s not too exciting,” he replied. 

“That’s really interesting, and what do you do in your free time Jon?” Mark asked quickly. Jon was evidently shocked at that question, and so was Rosie. What did he expect him to say?  _ Oh yeah I sacrifice people to my strange god with my coworkers?  _ That would be ridiculous. It took Jon a little bit longer to answer that question, with that pause Rosie noticed the shine in his eyes again. They definitely were _ not  _ just his glasses, but she didn’t know what would be causing his eyes to shine like that. It was almost animalistic in a way that made her head hurt more. While fishing for a good answer for Mark, Jon’s eyes stared into hers for a second. Not only were his eyes shining but they were  _ piercing _ . She’d known that people said that his gaze was creepy but upon seeing it for herself she started to really understand why people thought he was strange. For just that second he was staring straight into her soul to find things that even she didn’t know were there. Her headache hurt even more which caused her to become worried that she was having some strange medical ailment that she would need to get checked out with a doctor. 

“Well, I read, and I sometimes write...I guess, I’m sorry, I don’t have a lot of free time as I’m always caught up with..work..And I don’t really take too much time off,” Jon answered, he had already looked away from Rosie but it felt like his gaze lingered somehow. His pause on the word “work” had seemed to suggest that there was something else he wasn’t tell them, and she knew that Mark wanted to find out what that something was. Mark was just about ready to ask him another question when Dave, who looked to be increasingly more uncomfortable every second, decided to speak up.

“I-I think I’m gonna go guys, I have this  _ awful  _ headache and I don’t think we’re getting anywhere with this,” Dave said, stuttering a bit, he looked like he was about to pass out.

“Do you need some advil or something? Because we have some down here,” Jon said considerately. 

“Uh, yeah I think so,” Dave replied, Rosie was glad that finally they might be able to leave and so that she could maybe lie down a bit. Jon got up from where he was sitting at his desk and went to one of the filing cabinets and opened it. Inside was a medical kit along with some bottles of advil. Rosie didn’t know why exactly he would have this kit down there, it seemed like it had obviously been used which wasn’t a great sign. He offered the painkillers to Dave and then to the rest of them, Rosie took some, she didn’t know if would help considering how bad her headache was but it didn’t hurt to try. Mark looked like he wanted to ask more questions but he also took the advil so he must have also felt as sick as the other two did. 

“Well uh that concludes this um, thank you for your answers Jon, they’re greatly appreciated,” Mark said, Rosie was surprised, she didn’t think that Mark would back down from the questioning from the way she’d heard him talk last night. The headache must have hit him hard. Or maybe he knew this questioning wasn’t going anywhere.

“Oh, you’re welcome. May I ask what this questioning was for? We don’t get people down in the archives very often,” Jon said. 

“This was just uh-for the company review, to see how the workers are doing,” Mark lied. His poker face was terrible and she could tell that Jon knew he was lying as well. Jon sighed, as if he’d heard this lie before. Then he looked up straight at Mark and spoke.

“ _ What are you really questioning me for? _ ” Jon asked, his cadence was different than his normal speaking voice. It was like he already knew the answer to the question he was asking but wanted to hear it anyway. There he sat, staring at Mark, the room was filled with a devastating silence for a second and then Mark spoke.

“I wanted to find out if you were a cult leader and if you were sacrificing people to your strange god with your coworkers,” Mark answered quickly. He blinked a couple times, as if he couldn’t understand what he’d just said or why he said it. “Wait how-how did-how did you do that?” Mark stuttered and for the first time in her life, she saw Mark look terrified. Rosie couldn’t blame him, whatever Jon just did was...well it was evidence to support how strange the archives were, that was for sure. After what felt like a minute or so of silence, Mark ran, Dave quickly dashing behind him, she assumed that they were getting out of the archives. She stood there frozen in Jon’s office. He sat there, staring into the middle distance for a moment.

“That was  _ interesting _ ,” he said, she wasn’t sure if it was to himself or to her. “Rosie I-I apologize, the archives are quite...they give people headaches. For most people, they go away after an hour or so of being in the archives,” he said looking up at her. His eyes held the same piercing stare that they had before but despite that he seemed genuinely apologetic. 

“I...thank you, I know that those two can be a lot sometimes. I hope...I hope that they don’t bother you again,” Rosie replied. The two of them knew that they were dodging around the obvious question and answer of  _ what did Jon just do,  _ but it seemed like Jon wouldn’t have answered if Rosie questioned and she wasn’t in the mood to ask. They politely said their goodbyes and Rosie stepped out into the rest of the archives closing the office door behind her.

_ Well that was... strange? Terrifying?  _ She really didn’t know the word for it. From there she decided to go back to her desk. Once she got there she noticed Dave and Mark standing there nervously. When they saw her they looked instantly relieved. 

“Oh you came back!” Dave said surprised, “We-we didn’t know if you were going to come back or not,” he continued. 

“What? Did you think that Jon was going to murder me in the 2 minutes I was left alone with him?” she questioned, despite Jon  _ definitely _ not being as normal as Rosie had thought, she didn’t think that he was a murderer. A creep, yes definitely, but she didn’t think that he had the ability or the motive to kill her. 

“Yes! As soon as we got up here we realized that you weren’t behind us and we assumed that maybe he held you there with his weird cult powers or something!” Mark answered, the two of them looked genuinely worried.

“No we just had some awkward small talk and then I left, nothing interesting or “cult-y” as you say,” Rosie replied. While the two men paused to figure out some sort of response in their bewilderment, Rosie noticed that her headache had gotten slightly better. She wasn’t sure if it was because she wasn’t in the archives anymore or if the medicine had worked. 

Finally Dave spoke up and said, “Wow, I guess we’re gonna have to bring this up at the next meeting huh, I’m not sure what it’s evidence of but I do think that we’re onto something.” Rosie didn’t really want to know what they thought that the whole ordeal was “evidence” of, she just hoped that it wouldn’t bring about more arguments about what cults actually were. After a few more minutes of talking Dave and Mark left her desk to go “research something in the library” according to Mark. She sighed as she sat down at her desk,  _ god what did I get myself into? _ She thought. She decided that the only way she would be able to have some semblance of a normal day was to keep working on what she was working on before she went into the archives. Throughout the day she couldn’t help but think about what had happened in the archives and she started to understand a little bit better why the new employees were so freaked out about it. 

_ What else could they be hiding? _ She thought before she went back to work. The only thing she knew fully was that she did  _ not  _ want to go back down to the archives to find out the answer to that question. 


End file.
